Sold as a toy, caps seriously burned my son

Mary Landers/Savannah Morning News Here's the package of ring caps. Under the plastic frame it states "Do not place caps in pockets," but doesn't explain why. We found out the hard way.

Mary Landers/Savannah Morning News Ty's cargo pants show the burned lining. The red spots are the melted rings of caps.

My 8-year-old son and I spent Easter afternoon in the emergency room after he burned his leg with caps from a toy cap gun. He’s OK, but I’m sharing his story as a cautionary tale.

Ty had the caps in his pocket. They’re the type that come in a red plastic ring, each cap about the size of a peppercorn. As best we can re-create it, he jumped from the couch to the floor and one cap fired, setting off multiple rings in the thigh pocket of his cargo pants.

It burned a hole through the lining of the pants, melted all the plastic together and burned his thigh and knee cap.

The whole thing took about 20 seconds. By the time he made it to the kitchen, screaming and crying, and we poured cool water over the area, the damage had been done.

Emergency room staffers confirmed he had second degree burns. A follow-up at the pediatrician revealed a small area of third-degree burn as well. We changed the dressings twice a day and applied an antibiotic ointment to keep it from getting infected. Four weeks, a lot of pain and hundreds of dollars in medical bills later, it’s almost healed.

Prior to this incident I was focused on my son not pointing the cap gun at anyone, not using it indoors and the like. I had no idea the caps could ignite in his pocket. Looking closely at the package afterward (as I stomped out to the garbage with it) I noticed it did have a warning: “Do not put caps in pockets.” The warning was obscured by the plastic frame around the caps, though. And it was just that vague, saying nothing about a fire hazard in a little kid’s pocket, which is of course where a kid is going to put them.

I filed a formal complaint with the Consumer Product Safety Commission about these caps, which I think should at least carry a more explicit warning.

It turns out Ty is far from the first child to be burned in this manner. Even one of the two pediatricians we saw said he has a scar on his chest where a cap burned him. A 2006 article in the Journal of Burn Care Research indicates a San Diego burn center saw seven burn injuries from caps in one three-year period. Four of those patients required skin grafts.

“The nature and extent of snap-cap injuries support the contention that snap-caps have the potential to harm children to whom they are marketed,” the authors conclude.

A 2007 article in the Journal of Paediatric Child Health chronicled five boys treated in a five-year period at an Australian hospital, noting “in three cases the caps appeared to explode with minimal handling.”

“There appears be a need for greater awareness regarding the dangers of these toys,” the authors state.

When I was a kid, caps came in a paper roll. My brothers and I would buy them occasionally for the joy of smashing them with a hammer and hearing them pop. The wilder neighborhood kids would smash a whole roll at once. The caps Ty had, since they were encased in plastic, seemed safer. Obviously, they’re not.

Mary Landers, who covers environmental issues for the Savannah Morning News, and her husband have two sons ages 8 and 10. Contact her at 912-652-0337 or mary.landers@savannahnow.com.